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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I think it’s closer to learning binary and Boolean logic as the precursor to programming, learning about transistor circuitry as the precursor to that, and learning more fundamental electronic circuitry as the precursor to that.

    We use assembly where it’s appropriate, people build digital circuitry where it’s appropriate, people still build more basic/fundamental circuits where it’s appropriate. Learning the etymology of words is interesting and an important part of history and anthropology, as it helps us piece together how people in the past interacted. Again, I agree that it’s kinda weird to make a competition out of spelling. All I’m trying to say is that one of the side effects of spelling bees is that more people learn about the etymology and history of words, which is neat.




  • I literally just installed this last weekend, so the docs are still pretty fresh in my mind. I still recommend you go read through that site to get the full picture and make your own informed decision, but here’s my tl:dr.

    Valetudo, first and foremost, is intended to enable select models of vacuum robots to operate cloud-free. It’s not intended (nor is it feasible) to offer feature-parity with the manufacturers’ firmware/apps/cloud services. But in my limited experience, the only feature my robot is missing after installing valetudo is the ability to live-stream video from the onboard camera, which isn’t a big deal at all for me (and is something that the dev specifically won’t support). Everything else works flawlessly so far. It also allows you to configure just about anything the robot supports configurability for, like pathing algorithm adjustments, obstacle avoidance sensitivity adjustments, and a whole host of other things. I’m not sure if the manufacturer’s app even allows that level of configurability (because I never installed it), but I definitely feel like I have full control over my robot, and it functions flawlessly at performing its job of keeping my floors clean.

    I think the biggest thing to be aware of is the rooting/installation process may require some soldering (not of the robot, just some through-hole soldering on a separate breakout board to make connecting to the robot’s debug port more foolproof), and requires comfortability in a Linux terminal. If those things aren’t in your wheelhouse, I’d say this project probably isn’t for you.


  • If you have a robot vacuum, and the robot vacuum makes a persistent map (as opposed to the older “dumber” models that just bounce around randomly), they all send that map back to some remote server. In fact, most of those robots won’t even enable the mapping feature unless they’re connected to the Internet (which is absolute bullshit considering most of those robots generate, process, and store that map locally, so there’s literally no reason to send it off somewhere).

    So your options are to just use the robot without ever connecting it to the Internet and be happy with the reduced featureset, root the robot and install Valetudo on it, or just vacuum manually. But until manufacturers are forced to let us actually own the smart devices they sell is, under no circumstances should you ever let one touch the Internet.







  • I feel like AirBnBs just aren’t for single travelers though. When you can rent a whole house that sleeps 4-8 people, that’s when you can get things closer to $100-200 a night (or less), on par with hotel pricing. A group of travelers can also take advantage of the extra common space to hang out in, something you can’t really do in a hotel. A single person probably doesn’t care about being able to play board games out in the open concept living room/kitchen area, but that’s a marketable feature for the group of 6 that are in town for a bachelorette party or whatever.





  • Is frequent rebasing something I should push for? A clean history is nice, but I’ve just won them over on feature branches… Is this something quick and easy that would improve our quality of life?

    Realistically, in the short term, no. If neither you nor any of your team members are familiar with rebasing or rebase-based workflows, you will encounter problems that no one will know how to solve without researching. That’ll lead to frustration, and before you know it those old school teammates that don’t get git will fall back into using svn, or zip files with names like final_project_v1.2_final_final (copy)

    I recommend getting familiar with rebase- and merge-based workflows on your own first, like on your own projects/private repos, and reading through the git documentation. Once you become more of an expert, you might be able to teach your teammates how to be proficient at using git, or at bare minimum, you’ll be able to help them unfuck themselves when they inevitably fuck their repos up.


  • Sounds like the onboarding process needs to have a step in it that says “here’s a link to a git tutorial, read this and get familiar with using git, as it’s an integral tool that you will use every single day on the job”. Bonus points for providing a sample repo that juniors can use to mess around with git, extra bonus points for including steps in the onboarding materials for the juniors to set up their own repos to play around with.